As a child I knew /// That the stars could only get brighter

Cut Copy live at Nevereverland 2007, photo by mattbooy on flickr

I have spent most of the afternoon/early evening trying to ignore the fact that my friends are at Nevereverland today and I'm not there to party with them. As I type, Hercules and Love Affair are about to take to the stage. I was going to go, had my ticket sorted and everything, but work took precedence. Nevereverland would have been my festival. It's always been my dream to go to a gig/festival where both Cut Copy and The Presets were playing and Nevereverland would have been the ideal opportunity. My love of electro and all things Modular is no secret. While nothing could beat the amazing-ness that was Daft Punk last year, Modular brought together a great line up of bands to help them celebrate their 10th birthday. 

It would have been great to finally see the Klaxons perform, after having my plans to see them in Sydney last year crushed when Jamie broke his foot while stage diving. Am I doomed to never see them live, ever? Probably not but still, it would have been a good way for karma to make up for last year's incident.  

DFA'S Hercules and Love Affair would have been fun, these past few weeks I've listened to Blind at least twice a day. Can you believe they only performed live for the first time earlier this year, after their record release? Apparently it was an amazing gig.

There seems to be a bit of bad blood going on between Modular and Muscles, who was originally on the Nevereverland bill. On his blog a few weeks ago, Muscles explained that he got a call from his record label (Modular) saying he can no longer perform at Nevereverland because they can't afford it. Understandably, Muscles was rather angry about this - his own record label had dropped him from the line up of their birthday party. I did have a sneaking suspicion that tickets weren't selling very well (Are you crazy?? One of the best festivals of the year!) and this only confirmed my thoughts. Modular then posted this on their Mod Blog:

"Muscles is signed to Modular Recordings and his services are still required under that agreement. He was offered a spot at NEVEREVERLAND which still stands and whether he chooses to play or not is his decision. Obviously we would like him to be part of our 10 year celebrations and hope he turns up to perform."

Hmmm, curious. He wasn't in the final schedule. Will this be the end of Muscles' relationship with Modular?

One of the ways that I have passed the time is by watching (again) Cut Copy live in New York on Pitchfork tv, getting me ridiculously excited about seeing them at Rhythm and Vines in only 16 days. I can't believe it's taken them so long to get here, it's just as easy to fly from Melbourne to Perth as it is Melbourne to Auckland. Now that they're super popular, I've missed my chance to see them in a more intimate venue as I would have liked. But hey, I'll take what I can get. There's no doubt that their live show will be amazing and the Pitchfork videos prove it. I'm particularly excited about hearing Future and Hearts on Fire live, I can tell things are going to get crazy.

Hearts on Fire live on Pitchfork.tv

While it would be awesome to meet Cut Copy the rational side of me thinks that would be a bad idea - every other encounter I've had with bands/musicians I love have been kinda embarrassing. I just get too star struck, in a style reminiscent of Toby Young. When I met Nick Zinner the first thing that came out of my mouth was "OhmygodcanIpleaseshakeyourhand?!" What a dick!